Many workers are still doing at least some of their work from the comfort of their home, according to a recent report.
Overall, 35% of employed Americans did some or all of their work at home on days they worked in 2025, according to results from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The same data showed 70% of employed people did some or all of their work at their workplace in 2025.
Many workers split time between the two locations, meaning the two figures overlap rather than adding up to a fixed total.
The survey also found a gender gap in where work is performed. Employed women were more likely to work from home than employed men, at 38% compared with 31%, respectively.
Education level widens the divide
Among workers age 25 and over, education level showed an even wider split than gender, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. More than half (51%) of those with a bachelor's degree or higher performed some work at home on days worked, compared with 19% of those with a high school diploma and no college.
Workers with a bachelor's degree or higher were also more likely to have worked on an average day than those with a high school diploma and no college, at 72% compared with 63%.
The gap suggests that access to remote work in 2025 remained concentrated among more highly educated employees, while workers with less formal education were more likely to be tied to a physical workplace.
Hours worked on weekdays and weekends
On days they worked, full-time employees averaged 8.1 hours of work in 2025, according to the ATUS.
That average broke down to 8.5 hours on an average weekday and 5.5 hours on an average weekend day (BLS, ATUS 2025 news release, USDL-26-1022). 81% of employed people worked on an average weekday, compared with 30% on an average weekend day (BLS, ATUS 2025 news release.
Among those who worked weekends, workers with lower levels of education put in more hours than those with a bachelor's degree or higher. High school graduates with no college worked 6.4 hours on weekend days they worked, compared with 4.0 hours for those with a bachelor's degree or higher.
How Canada compares
Canadian data points in the opposite direction from the U.S. figures. According to a Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey supplement, 17.4% of employed Canadians usually worked most of their hours from home in May 2025, down from 18.7% in May 2024, marking the fourth consecutive annual decline.
Over the same period, the share of employed Canadians commuting to a workplace rose to 82.6%, up 1.3 percentage points from May 2024.
The decline is not evenly distributed across the country. As of May 2024, the Ottawa–Gatineau region had the highest rate of employees mostly working from home at 34.2%, compared with 24.7% in Toronto, 22.4% in Vancouver and 20.6% in Montreal.
Despite the decline in remote work prevalence, worker preference for it remains high, according to the non-profit research and polling organization the Angus Reid Institute.
A July 2025 survey by the Institute found 59% of Canadians said they would prefer to spend the majority of their working time at home if given the choice, and that figure rose to 76% among Canadians who have worked from home in the past or currently do.
The same survey found that 29% of Canadian workers were working from home in some capacity at the time of the survey.
The Angus Reid Institute survey also found friction over return-to-office mandates. Among workers who were asked to spend less time working from home, 51% said they were upset by the request, while 17% reacted positively.
The upheaval brought about by the pandemic has given way to a lasting hybrid work model rather than a return to pre-2020 norms, according to a previous report.
